A Possibility of Violence (5 page)

Chava Cohen looked at him, surprised. “You think they tried to threaten one of the parents?”

“I'm asking.”

She was less impatient when his questions didn't deal with her. “I don't have children from the slums, and as far as I know, all the parents here are totally fine.”

“If I were to ask you to tell me what each does for a living, would you know?”

She turned and looked at the picture that drew his attention. “Don't think so. I don't see many fathers, mostly moms. Some work and some don't work. And this is just the beginning of the year, I don't know everyone. I can tell you that Arkadi's father is an electrician, because he helped us with an electrical problem last week.”

Avraham got up from his place when he asked her who else works at the daycare, and she answered, “No one. Just me and an assistant.” And when he asked for the phone number of the assistant he noticed that she grew tense again. Despite her resistance at the start of their conversation, she invited him to return to the daycare tomorrow in order to talk with the assistant, because there was no hope of getting her on the phone. “But what can she tell you that I haven't said? She's barely been here two weeks. I brought her in a day before the start of the year, and she doesn't know a thing about the parents or the building,” she said.

 

HE DIDN'T SPEAK WITH ILANA LIS
until the following day, after he'd finished the investigation's pressing tasks.

Uzan again left his apartment at eleven and drove in the black Civic to the hospital without stopping on his way. When he got out of the automobile he was carrying the large bag with a change of clothes for his mother. He left the hospital at four, without the bag, and traveled to his home. Avraham debated whether or not to summon him for additional questioning, but there was no new information, other than the testimony of the neighbor who identified his face from the photograph and thought that he was the father of a child at the daycare. But Uzan had no children.

He left two messages on the cell phone of the assistant, and, just as Chava Cohen said, she did not respond. Nevertheless, he decided he would summon her to give testimony at the station and not question her at the daycare in the presence of the older teacher, and this would prove to be the right decision.

Though he seemed to be getting nowhere, he sensed that a breakthrough was near.

For the first time since his return to work he went outside to smoke a cigarette on the steps of the station, just as he loved to do. The heat was bearable, from time to time a breeze even blew, and he thought that he ought to go shopping before Rosh Hashanah. He called Ilana from his office and she was happy to hear his voice.

“You're in Israel for two weeks and you haven't come by yet to say hello?”

He told her that he returned to work and that he was handling the investigation into the fake bomb that had been placed on Lavon Street all by himself.

Ilana was silent, and it seemed to him that there was doubt in her silence. “How's it coming along?” she asked, and he said, “Actually that's why I called,” and he told her about the liquor store.

“I thought the bomb was placed next to a daycare.”

“That was the assumption,” he said. “But when I arrived at the scene I discovered the store, and I think we shouldn't dismiss that possibility either.”

Ilana agreed. She recommended that he check if other business owners in the area were being blackmailed, and he said he had done this already. No business owner in the area had submitted a complaint about blackmail, and to the best of the district's intelligence officers' knowledge no gang operating in the area was extorting protection money from business owners.

He listened to the familiar voice and waited for her to mention the report that she wrote about the Ofer Sharabi investigation.

Ilana told him that in recent months a covert investigation was being conducted on a national level, in cooperation with supervisory bodies from the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor, into the practice of importing counterfeit liquors into Israel. This was a massive industry, and apparently more than one crime family was involved in it. If this turned out to be the direction, catching the individual who placed the bomb might lead investigators to whoever was running it. “It's possible that this is really the issue,” she said. “But as far as I know, they push these counterfeit bottles onto the kiosks and the clubs, and the owners cooperate because the prices are much lower than the prices of the real brands. It's hard for me to believe that now they're trying to push them onto the stores, and by force. First thing, invite an investigator from the Ministry of Industry to check the store. Start there.”

He waited until the last moment and Ilana still didn't mention the report, but before they got off she said to him, “Avi, there's something I have to tell you face-to-face, because I don't want you to hear it by chance from someone else. Will you tell me when you have time to meet outside of work?”

Marianka also sounded distant when he finally managed to speak with her, that evening.

He told her that he had been trying to catch her for the last few days, to which she offered no response. Nevertheless he told her about the first days at work and Saban's speech, and was surprised by her reaction. “Why does he sound so idiotic to you?” he asked, and Marianka said, “Because that's the speech of a politician, not a cop. He's simply vapid, don't you think? Real cops know that there aren't areas free of violence. Every place where there's people there's violence.” There was an anger in her voice that Avraham didn't understand.

When he asked her how she was doing and how the preparations for the trip were coming along she avoided answering. She asked how he was feeling at work and he said excellent. Since he returned he was sensitive to what was being said and what wasn't, to what was visible and to what was trying to remain hidden. Nothing evaded him. Not Chava Cohen's lies, nor the fear in the voice of the assistant before she agreed to come to his office tomorrow morning to give testimony, even though it would be just a few hours before the holiday began.

“And how are your parents?” Marianka asked, and he said that he'd see them tomorrow.

“Do you know that it's Rosh Hashanah?”

She didn't know, and he told her that it was his favorite day of the year. “I don't know how to explain it to you,” he said, “I guess you just have to be here.” A sentence was echoing in his brain, but because of the distance between them he didn't say it out loud:
When the sun sets this evening, it's as if it understands that it's setting for the last time.
Before they got off, he asked her, “Do you miss me?” and she said, “Yes.”

 

THE NEXT DAY, AT 8:30 IN
the morning, Natalie Pinchasov was in his office and within a matter of minutes told him about the warning call. She was twenty-two years old, and her face was pale and beautiful. Avraham thanked her for agreeing to testify on the eve of the holiday. Most of the time her eyes were lowered and her voice quiet, and she looked around as if seeking out someone else unseen in the room. In her hair were dyed red streaks. He asked how long she'd been working at the daycare and she said since the start of the fall session, less than three weeks. He noticed that on her neck, below her hair, was a long scar.

“How did you wind up at the daycare?”

“My past employer recommended me. Last year I didn't work steadily, I was a substitute assistant at a few daycares. A week here, a week there. There isn't a lot of work at daycares now. But about a month ago one of the women I worked with called and said that Chava was urgently searching for an assistant.”

“Why urgently?”

“Because the assistant who was working with her quit a few days before the start of the season.”

He spoke with her in a soft voice. Offered her coffee or tea. Asked her where she lived. She took two buses to work, left her house around six thirty. The daycare opened at a quarter to eight but she needed to be there fifteen minutes before then in order to help Chava get the place ready and welcome the children. Afterward he asked her if she had been witness to any anomalous events at the daycare and she cautiously asked him, “What is . . . anomalous?”

“Whatever strikes you as odd. Something that looks exceptional to you and that you might perhaps connect to the bomb.”

She again looked around, and he said to her, “I promise that everything you say will remain between us. Not a word you say will leave here.”

She touched the scar on her neck. “There were two parents, yes. Who had an argument with Chava. But I don't think that this can be connected to the bomb.”

“It doesn't matter. I want you to tell me whatever strikes you. Parents who . . . what?”

“Who argued with her.”

Chava Cohen had told him that she wasn't involved in any disputes with anyone.

According to the assistant, one mother—Orna Chamo was her name—suspected, correctly, that her son spent most of the day separated from the rest of the children, seated in a chair in the corner of the room, without permission to move from his spot, because he cried a lot. A few days after the start of the year the mother arrived for a surprise visit and a scuffle almost broke out between her and Chava Cohen. She took her child out of the daycare. And a few days ago one of the fathers, an older man whose name was Chaim Sara, came and almost violently attacked the teacher because he suspected that children were hitting his son, and then Chava Cohen answered him rudely. In the meantime Chaim Sara's son continues coming to the daycare, but now only his father brings him and not his mother, maybe in order to intimidate the teacher.

“Do you think one of them could be connected to the suitcase?” Avraham asked, and she said, “I don't think so. Don't know. Maybe there was . . .” and she fell silent.

What was she afraid to say?

“Natalie, I want to explain to you why it's necessary you tell me everything. Our fear is that the suitcase was just a warning and that whoever placed it might commit more extreme acts, which would put the children in the daycare at risk. I understand that you're afraid to lose your job, but I promise you that nothing you tell me here will leave this room.”

She spoke quietly. “There was a phone call. A woman called on the day of the suitcase.”

He tensed up and stuck the tip of the pen into the open notepad in front of him. “And said what?”

“Said that this is just the beginning. That the suitcase is just the beginning, and that I should tell Chava.”

“The beginning of what? Try to remember the exact words.”

“That's what she said. ‘The suitcase is just the beginning. Tell Chava the whore that this is the beginning.' And then she hung up.”

“You answered the phone? At what time exactly was this?”

“I don't remember the time exactly. In the afternoon. When the children were napping.”

“Give me an approximate time.”

“After one, maybe.”

He knew the answer to the next question but nevertheless asked her if she reported the conversation to Chava Cohen, and Natalie answered, “Of course, I told her right away. She said that this was a mistake for sure. That it isn't connected to her and that it must be a wrong number.”

“And she asked you not to tell anyone about the call?”

Her face went pale, and he was afraid that she'd burst out crying. “She's worried that it will frighten the parents. Also, yesterday afternoon she called me and asked me not to say a word about it, because it means more investigations and more police and the mess will just upset the parents.”

At the time the phone rang at the daycare, Uzan was sitting across from him, in the interrogation room, and would not have been able to telephone anyone. And it's doubtful that Uzan would have been able to distort his voice and sound like a woman, even if he'd had the opportunity.

“You're one hundred percent certain that this was a woman?”

“Yes. It was the voice of a woman.”

Nevertheless he showed her the picture of Uzan and she examined it for a long time before saying that she'd never seen him before.

 

HE ESCORTED HER OUT OF THE
station and asked the duty officer for Benny Saban's cell number. Lit a cigarette on the stairs. At the sound of Saban's voice, it occurred to him that this was the first time he was talking with him on the phone, and he didn't know what to call him. He said, “Benny?”

“Yes, speaking. Who is this?”

“Inspector Avraham. I apologize for the disturbance on the evening of the holiday, but I wanted to update you in regards to the suitcase.”

“What case?
Who
is this?
”

In the background a hammer could be heard banging loudly, and it seemed to him that someone was speaking Arabic.

“Suitcase. The suitcase on Lavon Street. Next to the daycare center. It's Inspector Avraham, from the station.”

“Ah, ah, Avi. How are you? I'm happy to hear from you. Yes, what about the suitcase? The line is really shitty.”

“I wanted to tell you that you're right. It was a warning. I discovered that on the same day a woman called the daycare and announced that this is just the beginning.”

“Great, great. I'm happy to hear it. And what are you doing with this?”

He didn't understand the question. “This means it's possible that the suspect we arrested was the wrong man. He was with me in the interrogation room at the time the warning call was made. And apparently we are looking for a woman, not a man. Or maybe a woman
and
a man. In addition, the information didn't come to me from the teacher, who tried to hide it.”

The call was disconnected, and Saban didn't call him back.

He had wanted to ask him if he should call Chava Cohen in for an emergency interrogation or wait until after the holiday.